Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is leading an effort to get the nation’s employment practices watchdog to abandon a plan that, he believes, would punish Christians in the workplace.
Last week, the Florida Republican, joined by GOP Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, sent a letter to the leaders of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to question new rules governing harassment in the workplace.
According to the letter to EEOC Chairwoman Charlotte Burrows and Vice Chairwoman Jocelyn Samuels, the rule “weaponizes anti-discrimination laws and invites disgraceful suppression of free speech and religious liberty in the workplace.”
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As an example, Rubio noted the case of John Kluge, former high school orchestra teacher at an Indiana public school.
Writing about Kluge in an opinion article last week for the website Washington Stand, Rubio noted he was forced to resign his job in 2017 after the principal of Brownsburg High School ordered teachers to use students’ “preferred pronouns” instead of those acknowledging their biological sex.
Kluge objected to the order, citing his Christian faith. The principal told him to resign after rejecting Kluge’s compromise to use only students’ last names.
“This injustice is tragic — and frightening — on its own. Unfortunately, it is just a preview of things to come if the Biden administration gets its way,” Rubio noted in the op-ed.
He reiterated that point in the letter to the EEOC.
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“The proposed guidance distorts sincere expressions of faith as ‘religiously motivated harassment,’ and it undermines religious liberty protections guaranteed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Rubio and Budd argued.
“If finalized, the EEOC’s proposed guidance will usher in a future in which federal bureaucrats dictate which religious beliefs are, and are not, acceptable in the workplace, and holds employers legally responsible for policing the penchants of bureaucrats in Washington.”
Rubio highlighted the “radical nature” of the EEOC’s proposed rule in a passage from the document. The rule “infers that a biological male who identifies as a ‘female’ faces harassment if a coworker addresses them with the term ‘dude.’” Rubio and Budd added, “In fact, the guidance employs convoluted logic to argue that ‘misgendering’ is hostile and prohibited speech.”
“Millions of faithful Americans believe that biological sex and gender are inextricably woven together. Yet, the EEOC is attempting to forbid these citizens from expressing their views out of a desire to appease left-wing activists,” the senators wrote.
As such, the rule is really an “unconstitutional compelled speech agenda that prioritizes fringe social ideologies over the unalienable rights ensconced in our Constitution.”
The language of the EEOC’s proposed guidance recognizes the Civil Rights Act’s mandate that employers recognize religious expression in the workplace, Rubio and Budd pointed out.
Yet, the same rule cites “special consideration[s] when balancing anti-harassment and accommodating obligations with respect to religious expression,” they wrote.
Specifically, the EEOC now asserts that employers are not “required to accommodate religious expression,” so long as the expression aligns with the agency’s definition of a “hostile work environment.”
As Rubio wrote in the Stand op-ed, the EEOC “would require virtually every employee in the United States to embrace his or her colleagues’ self-described sexuality, gender identity, and ‘reproductive rights.’ Under this rule, anyone who does not conform to left-wing orthodoxy, as well as any employer who protects him or her, could be the target of a federal investigation and lawsuit.”
In the letter to the EEOC’s leaders, Rubio and Budd added, “Title VII was specifically designed to protect the right for religious Americans to express their dearly held beliefs even when those beliefs might be controversial or offensive to others.”
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“EEOC’s baseless interpretation of Title VII views this statute as irrelevant to the very situations it was intended to address. This insults Americans with religious convictions, and it is a backdoor attempt to illegally impose partisan gender-related speech codes in every workplace,” the senators argued.
“The EEOC’s recently proposed guidance is illegal, divisive, and out of touch with ordinary Americans. We urge you to withdraw this proposed guidance immediately,” they concluded.
In the op-ed expanding on the topic, Rubio added, “‘Mis-gendering’ a coworker? Illegal. Denying a man who says he is a woman access to the women’s restroom? Illegal. Publicly expressing a biblical view of marriage? Illegal. Disputing an employer’s decision to offer paid leave for abortions? Illegal.”
“This guidance … is an affront to common sense and an all-out assault on Americans who hold deep religious convictions about marriage, family, sex, and the human person,” the Florida senator continued.
“It is one thing to hold progressive values. It is another to demand that everyone else agree with you. Using the federal government to mandate that agreement is two steps too far — it effectively violates the First Amendment by establishing wokeness as America’s state religion, and it guts the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”
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